I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

This news is undoubtedly going to have people screaming “DO NOT WANT” for some time, but let me really piddle in your corn flakes: you know all those Star Wars parodies? All those great ones? You know how they’re all over the place, largely because George Lucas has the laudable quality of being generally tolerant of people playing in his sandbox?

You notice how that doesn’t happen so much with Disney products?

Yeah. There’s a reason for that.

Moe Lane

PS: Also: hey, how long can Disney keep its intellectual property out of the public domain? That’s right, kids: forever! Or they’ll die trying. Amazing what you can accomplish when you have the resources to buy a couple of Senators and a bunch of Congressmen…

Given what Lucas has done to the franchise over the last decade-and-a-half…
I’m actually OK with this.
It’s extremely doubtful Disney will screw it up more than Lucas already has. (As you’ve noted, Disney likes to protect its intellectual properties. Which means something franchise-destroying like “The Phantom Menace” is unlikely to ever be seen again. Also, I might actually be able to buy a copy where Han shoots first. Disney’s evil, soulless, etc. But they have no compunctions about selling me what I want to buy.)
And hey, if Disney runs the franchise into the ground, Lucas has already inoculated me against caring.

I’m one of those Star Wars fans who has to hide from other fans. I liked the prequels, my favorite SW movie is Jedi, not Empire, I like the special editions (except for Greedo shooting first, that pisses me off) I could go on, but I won’t. But I will say that I kept looking at my calendar as I read the article wondering how space and time got bent to wedge an extra April 1st into the year. I am ambivalent about this whole thing. I never thought that there would be more SW films in my lifetime, but I also never thought Lucas would give up control over the franchise.